The week in Decency: Harry's Place
Strolling down to Harry's Place while my weekend Scotch Egg warms up in the oven, I see that a new phrase has been coined:
"the genocidal "One State Solution" policy"
As I understand it, the "one state solution" involves giving Israeli citizenship to the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, plus the refugees. This would, under sensible demographic assumptions, mean that the state thus constructed probably would not have a majority of ethnic-Jewish citizens. It would thus no longer be a specifically Jewish state, and I can sort of see how one might progress from this to saying that the Jewish state would be forced out of existence by a one-state solution, and thus by something of a rhetorical pole-vault to the idea that it was "genocidal". But the rate of inflation here would make a Zimbabwean counterfeiter weep. Quite apart from anything, if hypothetically depriving the Jews of a single-ethnic state of their own is going to count as "genocide", it is going to take quite a feat of tapdancing to come up with a form of words to describe the state of affairs in Gaza, Jordan and the refugee camps which doesn't get the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism hopping mad. Justin has a really good statement of the essence of Decency in comments to the post below (which I will hoist up and post if he's cool with that), and this use of "genocidal" is clearly of a piece with it; one of the central tenets of Decency is the negation of the proposition "no need to be an ass about it".
Sauntering on downblog, a ringing endorsement of Dean Godson, who as we recall, comes to the question of "handing out state money to political organisations in the interest of counterterrorism" from, shall we say, a rather unusual background.
Meanwhile, poor old Gene is apparently "furious" at the nest of rat shit that Iraq has become, although obviously not to the point of "picking over the rubble", as that would be bad. His final paragraph in which he concludes "What can we do? Stand in support of Iraqi trade unionists" is one for the ages.
"the genocidal "One State Solution" policy"
As I understand it, the "one state solution" involves giving Israeli citizenship to the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, plus the refugees. This would, under sensible demographic assumptions, mean that the state thus constructed probably would not have a majority of ethnic-Jewish citizens. It would thus no longer be a specifically Jewish state, and I can sort of see how one might progress from this to saying that the Jewish state would be forced out of existence by a one-state solution, and thus by something of a rhetorical pole-vault to the idea that it was "genocidal". But the rate of inflation here would make a Zimbabwean counterfeiter weep. Quite apart from anything, if hypothetically depriving the Jews of a single-ethnic state of their own is going to count as "genocide", it is going to take quite a feat of tapdancing to come up with a form of words to describe the state of affairs in Gaza, Jordan and the refugee camps which doesn't get the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism hopping mad. Justin has a really good statement of the essence of Decency in comments to the post below (which I will hoist up and post if he's cool with that), and this use of "genocidal" is clearly of a piece with it; one of the central tenets of Decency is the negation of the proposition "no need to be an ass about it".
Sauntering on downblog, a ringing endorsement of Dean Godson, who as we recall, comes to the question of "handing out state money to political organisations in the interest of counterterrorism" from, shall we say, a rather unusual background.
Meanwhile, poor old Gene is apparently "furious" at the nest of rat shit that Iraq has become, although obviously not to the point of "picking over the rubble", as that would be bad. His final paragraph in which he concludes "What can we do? Stand in support of Iraqi trade unionists" is one for the ages.
posted by The Rioja Kid at 3/29/2008 02:52:00 PM
15 Comments:
Was the "withdrawal" from Gaza not with at least half an eye on the demographic problem of the one state solution?
By, ostensibly, washing their hands of the region completely, it would not longer come into the calculation. Unlike the West Bank, where the intermingling of settlements with the Palestinian population, and the reluctance of the Israelis to withdraw from any of them, makes it harder to oppose the idea of a one state solution, if a two state solution is, to all effects, impossible.
Harry's Place has become a terrible joke.
"How can we organise effectively against them, in a manner consistent with academic freedom?"
No comment required on this.
HP appear to have blocked the links from this site, btw.
...and they're working again now.
That happens a lot; I think it is not so much them doing it as a server that's set up in some funny way. One often has problems following links there from Normblog ... errr ... friends tell me.
Do you do requests?
If so, I was particularly looking forward to the Geras-baiting promised here.
Larry, that post was sort of Geras-baiting. I'm very ambivalent about Norman Geras. People I like (like Chris Brooke) get on with him; I've been profiled by him and found him courteous. My best mate was lectured by Norman Geras, although with his Henry Higgins-like ear, he thought our Norm was a Yank. OTOH, I find many of those posts on Normblog I read to be petulant and sarcastic and prejudiced (in the sense of having made a judgement previously).
Finally, I think Norman Geras does make some very good (as in 'internally consistent' and 'OK by me') arguments when he wants to. I don't dislike him or wish to bait him any more than I have done already.
That's fair enough CC.
But actually I meant (and tried to link to) dsquared's comment beneath your post, the one beginning "Wow".
It's sad but HP is now a parody of a parody.
Not worth the bother anymore
What can we do? Stand in support of Iraqi trade unionists
As someone on the comments instantly pointed out, the trade unionists referred to want to see the occupation ended immediately. What does HP-style 'support' mean? They certainly haven't posted many articles about Iraq in the last few months.
In fact their site seems to have become more than anything else a 'Bungalwala watch', with every Inayat posts on CiF mercilessly deconstructed in an orgy of misreading, innuendo, and invention of his opinions. The last one of these I read, in which he was taken to task for - er - the sub-editor-written byline of his piece and for things he hadn't actually written - was an especially bad example of this.
It's part of their ongoing and peculiar fascination with the government funding allocated to various UK Muslim organisations, on the basis that any Muslim with mildly conservative social views is on the 'continuum' leading to exploding buses and must therefore be ruthlessly hounded from public life.
Sadly and unexpectedly, HP commenters frequently mistake this noble and public-spirited campaign against a small number of stealth-jihadi Muslim charities for a hate campaign against Muslims in general, and enthusiastically join in as if it *were* a hate campaign against Muslims in general. Clearly no-one could have predicted this in advance and it is entirely unreasonable to expect the blog's moderators to take time out from scrutinising the MCB's accounts in order to do anything about it.
I think that the thing is that David T was visited by a gypsy as a child and has a magical ability to spot jihadis which is much better than the mere intelligence work and analysis of the police, MI5 and foreign office. He sort of sees the miasma of Qutbism hanging over their heads like a purple halo.
Obviously if you've got that sort of magical ability, it must be absolutely infuriating to then have to justify your decisions about who is and isn't a proper recipient of funding to the mundanes. It's a bit like "The Tomorrow People".
I will get onto the Geras piece at some point - unlike CharChap, I don't like him (and obviously it's mutual) and while he may have come up with some good arguments in the past, the ones he comes up with in support of his current thirst for war are often awful, and grounded in the same total refusal to consider that politics happens in the actual world that's evident in the bit we were discussing in Larry's link.
Maybe I will put it up as a sort of Euston Manifesto third anniversary post, as it appears that otherwise that momentous date will go totally unremarked.
which I will hoist up and post if he's cool with that
Do me a favour and correct the misspelling of Isaac, though
Just as a footnote to my last post, whenever I have posted anything on there which deviates from the 'party line', I've been told to either 'shut up' of 'come off it' by one of the people who runs it.
They really have mde a rod for their own back with that 'Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear'. In truth, what 'liberty' on HP means is that whenever you question the hilarious jumps in logic of a Brett Lock rant, you just get dismissed without any reasoning, or called a 'louddmouth' (sic).
And didn't that used to be 'democracy' as opposed to 'liberty', too?
"don't mention the war (too often)" has become the way of the Harry : considering their politics were formed by supporting the Iraq war, they just can't bear to deal with the realities of it too much any more. Brett Lock's long rant about how maybe the war was wrong/maybe it was right, but it is the front line agains islamism now so we'd better get behind the US appeared then disapeared - presumably because even he was embarrassed by the assertion that supporting Maliki's Islamist government was a bulwark against Islamism seemed a bit nutty. Heading further down the bottom of the barrel,The Drink Soaked Trots For War seem to have been driven quite mad by the Iraq experience. Their very silly "Will"(y) did post about the recent attacks on the Mahdi Army, , but only to say 'it's all very complicated', and put up lots of rather conspiracy-theory links "explaining" the conflict, without taking any sides. Silly Willy was reduced to telling off his fellow Decents for just moslem-bashing instead of commenting on Iraq - while simultaneously deleting any comments on Iraq that made him look foolish or feel uncomfortable.
While the better known decents are a busted flush on Iraq, they are still promoted by more right wing press gatekeepers - the Anne Mcelvoys & Finkelstiens, because they provide a bit of moral cover for the right while it retreats on Iraq. The Decent "at least we meant well" excuse is deployed to stop the conservative gatekepers from having to not only admit they were wrong about Iraq, but also to admit that the horrible smelly demonstrators, campaigners and the like were correct.
Post a Comment
<< Home